


Sea and Shore

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-21
Updated: 2007-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He meets her on a Tuesday, down by the harbor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea and Shore

He meets her on a Tuesday, down by the harbor. She's perched on a bicycle, a bone fide antique with wide, curving handlebars and generous tires, one foot on the gravel road, the other on a pedal. Her bike has a basket stuffed with notebooks at the front; a newspaper, two novels, and a brown paper bag that looks like lunch. She's scribbling on a pad of paper, yellow pencil flashing in the sun, and he has to clear his throat three times before she looks up and sees him, white-blonde hair whipping into her eyes.

"S'my truck," he offers apologetically, gesturing to the beat-up Chevvy behind her. "I need to back out."

She blinks, looks around as if she's only just realized where she came to a halt, then starts and stuffs the paper and pencil away. "Sorry, sorry," she says and starts to ride off.

"What's your name?" he calls after her - she's no one he's seen around before. But she's already gliding down toward the wharf and the wind's blowing all his questions inland, away from the laughing chaos of a playful sea.

*****

She comes to the harbor to write almost every day, and once he sees her take a sandwich out of her brown paper bag, chew on it thoughtfully while she watches a gull soar. Since none of the usual sources of town gossip have anything to tell him about who she is or why she's here, he's forced to take matters into his own, callused hands long before he's ready, climbing the cliff path after the catch is stowed, hoping he doesn't smell too bad of brine.

"Morning," he says, pulling off his cap.

She watches him, silent.

"You're new," he offers. "Thought I'd say hello. Bill - Bill Weasley."

She tilts her chin, tucks a curl behind her ear and wets her lips as she eyes him. "Damara Malfoy."

He cocks an eyebrow, repeats the name, savoring the weight of the first, rounded syllable. "Dam-ara," he grins, thinking _not from round here_. "Nice."

She nods. "Greek," she offers, then pinks as if registering that she surrendered information without being asked.

"You don't look Greek."

She smiles just a little. "Old Greek. Means - " The smile fades and she settles her shoulders. "Doesn't matter."

He's never seen poise like this in anyone real - in movies, maybe, or in visitors who pass through town shedding money like it's a nuisance, but this girl's not rich, not if her bike's anything to go by, or the fraying hem of her summer-green skirt. "It's pretty." Seems a safe enough thing to say. "You drink coffee?"

Her face comes alive for a second - a wide, welcome grin. "I love coffee."

"Can I buy you a cup?"

And her smile freezes, her gaze flicking away as she tidies up her pencils - colored and slate - her paper, her books. "I think - " She pushes her hair back from her face again. "I think yes."

He's surprised.

*****

He's half right and half wrong - she had money once, doesn't anymore, something to do with her father than she won't explain, and he doesn't push. Just knowing makes sense of some stuff - the way she walks, the manners she has, her quiet fearlessness, the calm in her voice, the authority it suggests.

(He sees her angry just once, when they're passing the docks and a crew from Nantucket whistles at her ass. She cows them all with the sharp edge of her fury, and he reckons her rage tells him something else about her dad).

The coffee becomes dinner, though he cooks at home, preferring the spaghetti his mom taught him years before to the dubious fish special at the diner in town. He kisses her that night, cradling her pale face between his hands, coaxing her mouth to open, bending toward her on the stoop as she leaves. When they part she smiles at him, her body softer somehow in the shadowed evening, and the sweetness in the squeeze of her hand as she turns to find her bike makes his breath catch in his throat.

He calls his brother Charlie, who tells him he's fucked in the head and gonna be married before the end of the year, and they bet each other a case of beer that the other one's wrong.

It's not only Charlie who notices the change. His crew starts calling him Belinda on the sly, and someone speculates Damara's a witch who's banished his sense of shame all the way to Boston. But he punches Tim with the kind of grin that says he's enjoying himself, and reminds the rest that he can always hold out on their pay. They indulge him, amused, and no more's said, but he tries to keep his mind a little more on lobster pots and a little less on pale grey eyes. He's not sure it works, but at least he makes the effort.

It's six months before he takes her home, subjects her to the tumult of his family, and if she bears it all with slightly wide eyes, at least she doesn't run for the sea. His brothers try to charm her, and his sister's never had any use for a question that wasn't phrased bluntly, but there's cake and coffee, and she beats the tar out of Charlie at poker, so Bill feels pretty safe stopping the truck on the way back home, proposing with the ring his grandma had worn.

She says yes, and he swears he's never seen her smile like that, like he's given her back something she'd lost. Maybe it's family, he thinks, as he puts the truck in gear, reaches for her hand and eases back out on the road. Maybe she misses the folks she never speaks of, and maybe there are brothers somewhere too, aunts and uncles - but he doesn't press, just kisses her knuckles and takes her to bed, touches every secret place he's learned to love and when she weeps, he holds her close, strokes her hair and promises her she's home.

*****

She moves in that summer, bringing everything she owns - a box with cloth napkins, silver candlesticks; two photos of school friends; a packing crate of books. He asks around town, hears the community college is hiring for fall, suggests she applies and isn't surprised she's hired to teach English straight away. There's money enough for another car, a brand new bookcase, and Bill grows to love the way she sits by the window, grading papers while the maples toss their crimson smiles outside. Some days he barely sees her, her schedule late and his too early, but she writes him notes and he packs her a sandwich before he leaves in a morning, draws a lobster on the bag and sets the coffeepot ready to brew again whenever she gets up. Before the weather turns predictably miserable, he takes her on the boat, shows her the engine, the hold, the pots; teaches her the weather markers written on the clouds, in the roll of the sea. She reads aloud from dusty books while he dozes on the couch, and her face lights up when he asks her what happens to Mr. D'Arcy next.

His work isn't pretty - he loves his boat, the freedom that shivers along his spine before dawn, but he can't help but wonder from time to time if this is really what she wants. She's books and paper, inks and words, and he's backbreaking labor, salt and sand. His hands are rough, and his face and his arms, and he can curse without thinking, read the strength of a storm on a sharp-turned wind. He wonders what he offers her, what she needs that's fulfilled by his size, by his clumsiness, when she so obviously belongs to the great houses built much further up the shore. But the days when those thoughts come it's as if she knows, pulls him close and kisses his doubt into sudden silence, walks with him along the harbor road and coaxes him sure.

*****

They're married in January - a filthy month, his mother thinks, nothing but gales and snow and rain. But Damara smiles, says she wants it this way, something to recall in the darkest months, a sense that they survived the winter, flourished in the spring. It's close to poetry, the way she puts it, and Bill's mom just sighs and says all right, your choice, smiles and falls back to planning the food. The ceremony's short, the guest-list small, but the party afterwards brings in half the town and Damara dances with all Bill's brothers, drinks enough champagne to turn her cheeks pink, and when someone asks Bill how'd he get so lucky, he answers he honestly has no idea.

When she tells him she's pregnant, smiling happily, he's so stunned he can barely speak for half an hour, just hugs her close and laughs into her hair. He isn't sure he has the hands for fatherhood, or the strength to watch her struggle with pain, but it ends up he hasn't time to think of himself when she goes into labor, and when they hand him his daughter, his palms are sure. They stumble through feedings, through short, fractured nights, and inch-by-inch he trusts enough to go back to his boat. She plants a garden, nurses their child, and when storms test his mettle there's something new to pull him home.

And this is his life, he realizes with affection, ten years blowing past in the blink of an eye - red-headed children digging clams by the shore, fights with his wife and stolen kisses, a pup become a dog, a house become a home. And each night for some stretch of hours there's sleep and touch, an anchor in a harbor that they've made together from grace and will, manners and determination, soft spun words and muscle honed smooth.

"It doesn't make sense," he whispers one night. "Us. We don't fit."

But she only smiles. "Yeah, we do," she murmurs. "We're sea and shore."


End file.
